II.  These modes of communication would leave no place for the admission of internal evidence; which ought, perhaps, to bear a considerable part in the proof of every revelation, because it is a species of evidence which applies itself to the knowledge, love, and practice, of virtue, and which operates in proportion to the degree of those qualities which it finds in the person whom it addresses.  Men of good dispositions, amongst Christians, are greatly affected by the impression which the Scriptures themselves make upon their minds.  Their conviction is much strengthened by these impressions.  And this perhaps was intended to be one effect to be produced by the religion.  It is likewise true, to whatever cause we ascribe it (for I am not in this work at liberty to introduce the Christian doctrine of grace or assistance, or the Christian promise that, “if any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God” John vii. 17.),—­it is true, I say, that they who sincerely act, or sincerely endeavour to act, according to what they believe, that is, according to the just result of the probabilities, or, if you please, the possibilities in natural and revealed religion, which they themselves perceive, and according to a rational estimate of consequences, and, above all, according to the just effect of those principles of gratitude and devotion which even the view of nature generates in a well-ordered mind, seldom fail of proceeding farther.  This also may have been exactly what was designed.

Whereas, may it not be said that irresistible evidence would confound all characters and all dispositions? would subvert rather than promote the true purpose of the Divine counsels; which is, not to produce obedience by a force little short of mechanical constraint, (which obedience would be regularity, not virtue, and would hardly perhaps differ from that which inanimate bodies pay to the laws impressed upon their nature), but to treat moral agents agreeably to what they are; which is done, when light and motives are of such kinds, and are imparted in such measures, that the influence of them depends upon the recipients themselves?  “It is not meet to govern rational free agents in via by sight and sense.  It would be no trial or thanks to the most sensual wretch to forbear sinning, if heaven and hell were open to his sight.  That spiritual vision and fruition is our state in patria.”  (Baxter’s Reasons, p. 357.) There may be truth in this thought, though roughly expressed.  Few things are more improbable than that we (the human species) should be the highest order of beings in the universe:  that animated nature should ascend from the lowest reptile to us, and all at once stop there.  If there be classes above us of rational intelligences, clearer manifestations may belong to them.  This may be one of the distinctions.  And it may be one to which we ourselves hereafter shall attain.